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Mark Zuckerberg’s new cause: Comprehensive immigration reform

The 28-year-old Facebook CEO and billionaire — after mostly staying out of the political fray while running his company’s day-to-day operations — is joining with other executives to form an issues advocacy organization, with an initial focus on comprehensive immigration reform, according to sources familiar with the discussions…

News of the group was first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, which said Zuckerberg has committed millions to the effort. A source told POLITICO that the group is likely going to be a nonprofit.

Other than Zuckerberg, a central person involved in the discussions is Joe Green, co-founder of NationBuilder and Causes, who was Zuckerberg’s roommate at Harvard University. Green recently resigned as president of NationBuilder and is now an entrepreneur in residence at Andreessen Horowitz, the venture firm.

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He’ll have enough money to flee to New Zealand or Switzerland after his witless plan to flood the nation with criminal aliens helps sink America, so what the hell does he care if the U.S. is undermined, fragmented, Balkinized and ruined.

Spanish language facebook (from the security of a gated compound in a new location), ho!

Where was Zuckerberg when Republicans were pushing the STEM bill that Democrats refused to support? This is exactly what Zuckerberg should want which would benefit his industry. He is nothing more than a left-wing party hack.

Obama exempted him from paying taxes…so he can use your taxdollars to propagandize for amnesty.

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Schadenfreude on March 24, 2013 at 3:58 PM

Please explain. No one hates Obama more than I, but Obama did nothing to exempt either Zuckerberg or Facebook from paying taxes. I don’t know all the specifics, but Facebook in large part availed itself of two legitimate provisions of the Internal Revenue Code. And neither of them represents a shady loophole.

Facebook, as a young company, probably had years of accumulated losses before it finally became profitable and eventually went public. Despite all the publicity and high-rolling numbers, when Facebook went public, the company itself didn’t realize any income. Still, when the company began hitting profitable years, it could carry forward losses from previous years to offset income in current years, thus reducing current year taxable income.

Another, and probably more significant, deduction from income came from the mass exercise of stock options by Facebook employees, including people like Zuckerberg. Now, I’m simplifying the explanation, but young companies sometimes award stock options to employees as an incentive to keep them for a big payday when you cannot currently pay them cash compensation. So, for example, the company may issue options exercisable at $10 when the value of a share is $10. Later, when a share is worth $100, the employee might exercise by paying the $10. Well, the $90 difference is treated as ordinary income to the employee and as a deduction for the company for company. So there’s some tax symmetry there. All the same, there isn’t some mad conspiracy against the fisc.

Now, there may be some minor intracacies that I’ve overlooked and there may be some way in which some quirk in the law allows for a little leakage. In the end, however, there really was very little, if any, to this notion that Facebook and availed itself of some abhorrent tax dodge.